Nintendo had a pleasingly successful holiday season in the UK market, selling enough physical games to become the best-selling publisher of December.
According to GamesIndustry.biz, a major portion of this success came thanks to Super Smash Bros. Ultimate which sold an impressive 284,155 copies at retail. Other titles like Mario Kart 8 Deluxe and Pokémon: Let's Go, Pikachu! also had a solid month, with Mario Kart actually joining Smash in the top ten for overall sales.
Nintendo didn't manage to walk away with top spot in the December charts - Red Dead Redemption 2, FIFA 19, and Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 all outsold Smash Ultimate - but the combined presence of major Nintendo titles meant that 29.5% of all physical sales were for the Nintendo Switch (slightly behind PS4's 39.7% total).
Of course, the PS4's top games all come from a variety of publishers, however, allowing Nintendo-published games to take top spot by accounting for 19.3% of all games sold; EA came in second with 13.6% (FIFA 19, Battlefield V, and more).
Here are the top 20 best-selling games in the UK for December 2018 (physical only):
1) Red Dead Redemption 2
2) FIFA 19
3) Call of Duty: Black Ops 4
4) Super Smash Bros. Ultimate
5) Battlefield V
6) Spyro Reignited Trilogy
7) Mario Kart 8 Deluxe
8) Forza Horizon 4
9) Crash Bandicoot N.Sane Trilogy
10) Spider-Man
11) Fortnite: Deep Freeze Bundle
12) Pokemon: Let's Go, Pikachu
13) Assassin's Creed Odyssey
14) Just Cause 4
15) Fallout 76
16) Super Mario Party
17) WWE 2K19
18) Just Dance 2019
19) Shadow of the Tomb Raider
20) Grand Theft Auto V
Are you surprised to see Nintendo come out on top, or is that exactly what you would have expected with the release of Smash? Share your thoughts with us below.
[source gamesindustry.biz]
Comments 40
Nintendo doomed.
Something outsold FIFA in the UK? I imagine there will be mass arrests and a government crack down on the illegal games trade in the UK soon. I am convinced that the UK mandates every citizen owns at least 2 copies of various FIFA titles.
That's awesome! Nintendo usually don't do great in the UK, but they seem to be making headway there. Keep it up Nintendo!
And that's in the UK where Nintendo always has a tough time. Can we get the same figures for the US perhaps?
@Heavyarms55 ha ha ha! Best comment ever! 😂😂😂😂😂
@Heavyarms55 Yeah, its called Brexit. Groan.
@Heavyarms55 I better create a hiding place, as the last football game I bought was Sensible Soccer on the Mega Drive.
good keep those physicals incoming!
@Heavyarms55 ha ha, excellent comment. The sad thing is, it’s true.
Along with GTA and COD, those are the only games we play in the uk
@EasyDaRon when it's in a traditionally weak market for Nintendo, it's worth noting.
Proud to say i'm a brit that's never bought a Fifa game in my life, its nice to see the rest of the country is finally broadening their range of games........slowly lol
@EasyDaRon
I know some people feel obliged to try and play down every bit of good news for Nintendo but no, this is a very big deal as Nintendo often struggle in the U.K. They beat EA, which means FIFA and Battlefield V.
But the UK hates Nintendo right? But ...... but.... but
@Samwise7 I don’t have any specific numbers, but Nintendo said they were the top publisher for 2018 in the US at the end of November, and that was before Smash sold 3 million in 11 days...
@Heavyarms55
You talk about Fifa so much I am beginning to think you secretly love it.
To be fair, most of the UK is digital these days (around 70% of game sales) so being the best physical seller isn't that huge of a deal. If anything it just tells me that Ninty is not great at digital.
Strange way to look at it. Sure, Nintendo as a publisher seems to command the top number of overall units sold over the Christmas period, but game by game nothing was crushed by Smash. Don't disagree (I cant) with a fact based article. I do disagree with the adjectives used to describe said facts. Plus, as previously mentioned, UK is digital led and not accounted for in sales. That other article listing Smash as top seller in Amazon confirms that with many of the top spaces reserved for PSN points cards.
@EasyDaRon
It’s a Nintendo site
Considering that Nintendo seems to often have some difficulties in the UK, this is pretty impressive!
@Heavyarms55: If I could upvote your comment more than once, I would.
@Samwise7: We won't know until the NPD results come out later this month, but I suspect the story is similar for the US.
@Shellcore
The U.K. isn’t digital led. Fifa made 25% of its sales digitally, other retail Console games won’t be much more.
@EasyDaRon Your market analysation is problematic. Back to the elementary school for you.
@Heavyarms55 I know you're joking, but please stop.
@Toadie I'm also proud to never have bought a Fifa game.
@EasyDaRon
You’re trying a lot harder to downplay it than they will have done making he news sound good. It’s amazing that you’re so bothered.
Sometimes it’s just OK that Nintendo have done something right. There’s nothing wrong with that you know.
That 6 days before Smash Bros came out is the reason why Smash Bros is not #1 here. Also this is physical only. We don't know if this would change when digital sales are added in.
@electrolite77
That's just an assumption. Also Smash Bros has the console bundle, that was digital version of the game.
@misterMike
I agree totally. A little more objectivitiy in their news reporting would be nice. Not sure if the peopel who write the articles actually read the comment section though.
Battlefield V underperforming probably prevented EA from taking the top spot.
@misterMike
Exactly! It's called clickbait, not qualitybait for a reason.
@electrolite77 You are right about FIFA, but the trend is there. In 2017, Pushsquare reported that 45% of games sales were digital on Triple A releases with a proposed 7% increases YOY. If that holds true, then it makes the below sources much more viable. They include MTX which skews it, but we will see digital added to UK chart data just after Q1.
https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2019-01-03-uk-video-game-sales-now-80-percent-digital
https://eraltd.org/news-events/press-releases/2018/streaming-boom-powers-entertainment-market-to-new-all-time-high-of-724bn-in-2017/
@MrMetroid Actually, that's not strictly true. 80% of money comes from digital, but that includes subscriptions, mobile, PC, microtransactions and DLC. When it comes to console AAA games, only 25% of the market is digital.
Furthermore, Nintendo having a 19% share of the physical console market in December - which, due to Christmas, is dominated by physical sales, is really significant. Over 5.5m physical games were sold in the UK in December last year.
As someone whose job it is to analyse the market, Nintendo nailed it in December.
And I'll be revealing tomorrow how big Nintendo was in the UK for the full year. And again, it's impressive.
@Shellcore
That 80% figure is hugely misleading. It includes mobile games, MTX, DLC, loot boxes and everything. I may be wrong but I’d be surprised if digital had overtaken physical in the Console space yet. Retailers were heavily discounting games this year and I wouldn’t be surprised if the shift has stabilised a bit now, especially With FIFA showing no increase.
You are right. The market is heavily physical for console games. FIFA 19 sales were 25% download to 75% physical. There is a shift going on, but the market isn't 'mostly digital'. Not in terms of console unit sales.
In addition, in December the split is even more in favour of physical due to the Christmas shopping window.
@EasyDaRon
“What do you mean with "done right"? They have a dozen relatively fresh games in the market for Christmas while competitors have a lot less since their overall older platforms”
That’s literally nonsense. Switch has been on the market since March 2017. In that time all their competitors have also released lots of fresh games. Games selling on PS4 and XB1 audiences have a much bigger potential audience to sell to.
“So why is it so surprising that they outsold the others?”
When did it last happen?
In 2017 Nintendo were third with an 11.3% market share. In 2016 they were 4th with 8.4%. In 2015 they were 6th with 6.6%.
To put it another way. In 2015 3DS accounted for 4.8% of the market share in unit sales for boxed software in the U.K. The Wii U took 3.5%. In 2018 that figure for the Switch was 24%
“ It´s not that Nintendo didn´t sell anything in the UK before (other way around people act as if this was the case)”
Nobody said they didn’t sell anything. However they have really struggled at times. I’m from the U.K. I’ve been a Nintendo fan since 1991. I used to work in games retail, I have a friend who’s high up in games buying at a major U.K. retail chain that deals with Nintendo. Nintendo have had a rough time of it in the U.K. (a lot of it self inflicted). The Wii U especially was poison to the extent most major retailers in the U.K. dropped it and some supermarkets dropped the 3DS as well. Switch was starting from a hugely disadvantageous position and the turn around is remarkable.
@CarpeDiem Clearly I was being facetious. Everyone blames every decline on Brexit so I was following suit.
The UK really needs to stop supporting EA.
@SBandy I talk about FIFA in articles where FIFA is a point of conversation. That's "so much" to you?
And to be clear, it isn't really FIFA I have a particular issue with, but I really dislike EA. For FIFA I just find it strange that a football/soccer game is so popular over the countless other games on the market bursting with real creativity, excitement, stories, action, puzzles, mysteries etc...
@Heavyarms55
I was only poking fun.
Regarding your reply, you can say the same about CoD, Fortnite, Battlefield etc.
People like Fifa, I like it, so they buy it as it is the perfect casual game. It doesn't stop other games also being bought as well.
I bought Fifa 19 as well as Hollow Knight, Gris etc this year. People can like the casual games and the indie critical darlings.
@EasyDaRon or try to play it down.
@electrolite77 I agree that without seeing the breakdown, it is hard to understand the exact figure for purely game sales. This will become clear over the next couple of months (for the UK) as will be added to the charts.
However, I have tried to back up my thoughts on this with numerous sources, not cherry picking one game which was highlighted BECAUSE of it's high physical over digital split. I'm not interested in "winning" any arguments, but its hard to say that physical as a whole still outsells digital with the aforementioned trends, struggles on the highstreet etc..
It will be interesting to see what the figures for 2018 look like when released. I will go out on a limb and say that digital will outsell physical on a games only basis. I will also say the "twins" have a higher digital ratio than the Switch due to storage space and ecosystem. When those figures are released, I am ready to eat my words if I'm wrong.
@SuperGhirahim64 I've been pointing that out about FIFA and Madden and the like for years. Ever since the advent of gaming systems with online patching and DLC abilities, I have felt the point of yearly sports releases were long gone. Updates to team rosters and player stats could be updated in regular patches, could even be done in real time with modern games.
Despite my rather regular criticisms of sports games on this site, I actually am glad good quality ones exist and have permission to use real teams and players. But I hate the way EA handles them. I further really dislike that EA holds the basically exclusive rights to making sports games. Because only they can make Football or American Football games with the actual teams and players, no one else can make a game that can really compete because an overwhelming majority will choose the game with the teams they know and love, even if a rival makes a game that is functionally better.
Tap here to load 40 comments
Leave A Comment
Hold on there, you need to login to post a comment...